The momentum grows for OpenGIS specifications and the products that implement
them. To match the quickening pace of change, OGC is considering a more timely
method of delivering information. OGC would like your input on an e-mail service
that would send e-mail news flashes when significant events or milestones are
reached. These might include information about new conformant products, new
implementations, meetings, opportunities for funding, etc. The frequency might
be as often as several times per month. We would only send such e-mails with
your permission.

If you would be interested this type of service, please let me know. If the
response is positive, we will establish this News Flash service and provide
a subscription mechanism.

Adena Schutzberg
Editor, OGC Newsadena [at] opengeospatial [dot] org

PRESIDENTS MESSAGE

OGC's September 10-14 Technical Committee and Planning Committee meetings
were somber and uneasy due to the meetings' physical proximity to the attack
on the Pentagon that week and due to the heartbreaking news of the attack on
the World Trade Center. We extend our deepest sympathies to readers of this
newsletter who are grieving for someone lost in these disasters. And we thank
all the OGC member representatives from around the world who expressed their
sympathy and solidarity. I feel personally blessed that this organization makes
me part of a true international community.

Despite the emotional difficulty, the meetings went on because there was a
general sense that the best thing we could all do, the best contribution we
could make, would be to carry our work forward.

I want to personally thank everyone who attended the meetings this month,
and I look forward to seeing you again in December.

David Schell, President, Open GIS Consortium

NEWS FROM THE ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA MEETING

Despite the horrible events of Tuesday, Sept 11 the OGC TC and PC meetings
were highly productive. The various OGC Special Interest Groups (SIG), Working
Groups (WG), and Revision Working Groups (RWG) worked hard and made considerable
progress on many fronts. Some of the key decisions and recommendations from
the week are:

1. The Architecture SIG recommended to essentially replace Topic 12 (Services)
of the OGC Abstract Specification with the corresponding ISO TC 211 document
(19119) along with some minor modifications to 19119 to reflect OGC requirements.
This is a significant move in terms of a) bringing the Abstract Specification
up to date and b) improving the alignment of OGC and ISO activities.

2. There was considerable discussion about the GML and ISO 19118 harmonization
issue. Based on these discussions, it is recommended to both OGC and ISO/TC
211 that a New Work Item Proposal be started in TC 211 to create an International
Standard based on the OGC GML specification so that the harmonization process
can take place within a single structure. The OGC Technical Committee (TC) and
Planning Committee (PC) approved this recommendation.

3. An interesting topic was discussed in the Coordinate Transformation WG.
This resulted in a recommendation to the TC and the PC that usage of the reference
to EPSG:4326 in the WMS v1.1 paragraph 6.5.5.1 in OGC documents and interfaces
be discontinued. Further, the OGC requests that the EPSG (organization) provide
a projected CRS that properly describes the practice. This was passed by the
TC and the PC.

4. The Documentation Sub-Committee Charter and Mission was approved. The DOC
Sub-committee also had discussions on various topics, including upgrades to
the Abstract Specification and how to handle terms and definitions.

5. The GML RWG recommended that the GML Specification v2.1 document, including
the revised schemas, be put to electronic vote of the TC and moved forward as
the most current and correct version of GML. This also passed.

6. The WWW SIG moved that the Web Terrain Server change status from an Interoperability
Program Report to an official OGC Discussion Paper.

Carl Reed, Specification Program Manager

ON STANDARDS

In this month's column I will highlight several organizations related to the
development of foundational Location-Based Services including the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF), the Location Interoperability Forum, 3GPP and 3GPP2, and
Parlay. These groups represent a small but important set of organizations engaged
in the convergence of the worlds of wireless communications and Internet services.

IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force),
http://www.ietf.org/,
is a large open international community of network designers, operators, vendors,
and researchers concerned with the evolution of the Internet architecture and
the smooth operation of the Internet. The technical work of the IETF is done
in its working groups, which are organized by topic into several areas (e.g.,
routing, transport, security, etc.). The IETF holds meetings three times per
year. During 2000, the IETF had a "Birds of a Feather" ad- hoc that focused
on the issue of location and the Internet. In 2001, these discussions resulted
in a new Working Group for Geographic Location and Privacy called for short
GeoPriv. The mission of GeoPriv is:

"As more and more resources become available on the Internet, some applications
need to acquire geographic location information about certain resources or entities.
These applications include navigation, emergency services, management of equipment
in the field, and other location-based services. But while the formatting and
transfer of such information is in some sense a straightforward process, the
implications of doing it, especially in regards to privacy and security, are
anything but. The primary task of this working group will be to assess the authorization,
integrity and privacy requirements that must be met in order to transfer such
information, or authorize the release or representation of such information
through an agent."

OGC Staff are currently participating in the GeoPriv Working Group. We are
looking to provide domain knowledge and expertise in the area of location. We
encourage OGC members to join this Working Group and provide input and/or writing assets.

The Location Interoperability Forum (LIF)
http://www.locationforum.org/,
is a global industry initiative, formed jointly by Ericsson, Motorola, SignalSoft,
Nokia and Siemens with the purpose of developing and promoting common and ubiquitous
solutions for Mobile Location Services (MLS) within carrier wireless network
operational support systems. LIF's goal is for location services to be independent
of network protocol and positioning technology. To achieve this goal, LIF makes
recommendations on network protocols and interface specifications to position
technologies to relevant standards organizations like Parlay, ETSI, and TIA
as well as OGC. LIF protocols and specifications aim to provide a simple and
secure access method to allow user appliances and Internet applications to access
basic location information from wireless networks, without regard to underlying
air interface technologies and positioning technologies. This interoperability
is exemplified in the LIF Mobile Location Protocol, a specification designed
to interface between a Mobile Positioning Server and a location-based application
or service. OGC is an active member of LIF, and many members of both organizations
are participants in the OpenLS Initiative.

The MAGIC Services Forum,
http://www.magicservicesforum.org/,
was founded with the goal of defining location-based services for the telematics
world, specifically navigation and location-based information delivery services.
As existing in-car navigation and telematic services grow, MAGIC seeks to define
a minimal set of generic geo-information services that will support these and
future mobile Internet ventures. The MAGIC Forum intends to influence and augment
the development of key wireless service protocols for location-aware mobile
terminals underway in the Internet Engineering Taskforce, WAP Forum, OGC, LIF
and W3C. Initial efforts of the Forum focus on Client Service API's. MAGIC Service
API's will be examined as part of OGC's OpenLS initiative. MAGIC represents
the interests of a number of companies such as Tele Atlas, Navigation Technologies,
Microsoft, MobileGIS and others, a number of whom are also OGC member organizations.

Parlay, http://www.parlay.org,
is an initiative to provide an open "umbrella architecture" to provide network
neutral application portability. The APIs developed by Parlay membership will
allow applications/components to be developed and implemented independent of
the underlying network. Parlay's contributions are important for wireless and
for location services; they underpin the contributions of LIF and OGC. At the
intersection of Web, wireless and GIS technologies, Location Services give everyone
the ability to exploit location information anywhere, anytime, and on any device.
OGC is working through SUN and through the JAVA Community Program to insert
OGC technology into this initiative.

The Third Generation Partnership Project, or 3GPP,
www.3g-generation.com,
is an international effort working to develop worldwide standards for third-generation
mobile phone services. The project is made up of standards organizations and
other related bodies that have agreed to cooperate to produce a complete set
of global technical specifications for a 3G mobile system based on GSM and radio
access technologies.

The Third Generation Partnership Project 2 (3GPP2),
http://www.3gpp2.org/,
is a collaborative third generation (3G) telecommunications standards-setting
project comprising North American and Asian interests developing global specifications
for ANSI/TIA/EIA-41 "Cellular Radiotelecommunication Intersystem Operations
network evolution to 3G, and global specifications for the radio. 3GPP2 was
born out of the International Telecommunication Union's (ITU) International
Mobile Telecommunications "IMT-2000" initiative, covering high speed, broadband,
and Internet Protocol (IP)-based mobile systems featuring network-to-network
interconnection, feature/service transparency, global roaming and seamless services
independent of location. IMT-2000 is intended to bring high-quality mobile multimedia
telecommunications to a worldwide mass market by achieving the goals of increasing
the speed and ease of wireless communications, responding to the problems faced
by the increased demand to pass data via telecommunications, and providing "anytime,
anywhere" services.

In my next article, I will discuss the Geography Markup Language (GML), its
critical role in geoprocessing and location services, and the important topic
of maintaining harmonization with major standards bodies.

Cliff Kottman, VP and Chief Scientist, Open GIS Consortium

OGC WELCOMES A NEW BOARD MEMBER

OGC announces that Dr. Mike Jackson, Head of Geospatial Systems at Hutchison3G
UK Ltd (H3G), has joined OGC's Board of Directors. Dr. Jackson is currently
responsible for the architecture and design of geospatial technology at H3G,
a third generation mobile telecommunications company, and its partner companies
worldwide. Before joining H3G, Dr. Jackson was the Chief Executive of Laser-Scan
Holdings (UK), a leading geographic information systems (GIS) company, for ten years.

Several updates to the Abstract Specification and a new discussion paper were
passed at the Arlington, VA meeting. See above article on News from the Arlington,
VA meeting for details. The updated documents will be available soon on the OGC website.

Cubewerx, an active OGC member, in partnership with SIGNIANT provided the
spatial data server reliable secure data transfer for a reference implementation
in support of earth observation. The press release notes that the development
of the reference implementation highlights "the benefits and flexibility of
the open standards approach taken by both vendors."

In an effort to expand the content of
the OGC Specification Implementing Organizations web page, all member
organizations and/or individuals are invited to submit the most current
information for all products implementing OGC Specifications. This
includes but is not limited to:

Product
and contact information from non-member organizations is encouraged.
Information about the implementation of the GML (all versions) is also
requested, including information about its usage capacity such as data
storage, data transportation, data delivery, or whether it is built
into specific products or used as an adopted standard for an
organization.

We've received word of three new
implementations since last month. International Interfaces, Inc. has
implemented the Web Map Server Specification (WMS) in its WMS Server
and Cookbook 1.0. MIT's Ortho Server also implements the WMS
specification. SRI International's TerraVisions implements WMS on the
client side.

With good participation from implementers this site can be a very valuable resource to the Open GIS community!

- Conformance Testing

OGC
Staff and Members met during the September TC Meeting in Arlington, VA,
to demonstrate prototype testing applications and to discuss the
ongoing collaboration for the Web Map Services Specification
conformance test suite. Presently the effort is focused on developing a
common data model for a standardized test suite. The uniform test cases
will allow multiple organizations to host testing services. Leading
this effort are Social Change Online with their online ConformIT
testing laboratory, and Logicon TASC with their OCCAM secure testing
facility. ESRI, Ionic, Intergraph, Laser- Scan, NASA, and the USGS are
also contributing to the effort.

It is common practice to analyze OGC work before beginning
any research and development project. In particular, we follow the harmonization
between OGC and ISO and try to be compatible with the recommendations. For example,
in a project where we developed an UML-base modeling tool with automatic code
generation for GIS and DBMS, we extended the UML class model with spatial and
temporal stereotypes and added corresponding metadata. We used OGC and ISO specs
wherever we could; this included proper naming of fields in the repository (useful
in an academic environment), specifying the exact OGC or ISO geometry in the
design of the database, and generating code with these specs and XML.

Our own in-house geospatial data infrastructure, used for
research and teaching purposes, depended on OGC and ISO work in the selection
and naming of our metadata. We use the georeferenced digital catalog and the
structure of the metadata to teach undergraduate and graduate students the vocabulary
used by standard organizations.

Recent work on the GeoInnovation project led to an innovative
solution called MAJIC which allows an organization to identify, store, filter
and distribute to its users only the desired updates made to its spatial database.
OGC and ISO standards were key elements in facilitating the integration of the
updates into the client's database.